Oriental Chicken Salad

Lazy health-conscious or vegetarian food served in the restaurant annoys me quite a lot!

I will always question the intention to serve the customers those bland and boring (unimaginative simply-just poach) looking health-conscious or vegetarian food that garnished with some raw green vegetable. Are they just being really lazy to make better food!? Healthy or vegetarian food doesn't have to be bland and boring! They should stimulate both the Mind and our taste buds!

This salad is so easy to make, very little cooking (skills) involved (other than to poach the chicken breast), but rich in various appetising colours, textures and full of traditional healthy medicinal, hydrated Chinese ingredients such as goji berries, snow fungus, cloud ear fungus and chrysanthemum flowers. (Ingredients typically used to make traditional herbal soup). Super healthy!

Once all the ingredients are prepared and put into a large bowl, prepare the oyster sauce with fresh grated ginger (with some of my special home made mango chilli pickles). Then sprinkle the sauce all over the salad and serve cold.

Perfect for hot summer days (to come..soon!!)

You can read articles about the benefits of those Chinese herbal ingredients used for the dish.

Blueberry and almond tart

This is quite an easy tart to make. An impressive dessert for any potluck gathering. Or any day when you really fancy some decent dessert without having to spend a lot of money to buy them in a patisserie. Homemade tarts are always taste much much better (and cheaper) than those from the supermarket!

There are two stages to make the tart.

Stage 1: The Pastry.﻿Ingredients:﻿

225g Plain flour

125g Unsalted butter

55g Icing sugar

1 zest of orange

3 Large egg yolks

2 tbsp Orange juice

Rub the butter into the flour until they resemble fine breadcrumbs texture and then mix in the icing sugar and orange zest. Add one egg yolk at a time to the flour mixture until incorporated. Finally add one tablespoon of the orange juice at a time to the flour mixture and mix until all come together as a dough. Wrap the dough with the cling film and refrigerate it for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180'C. Prepare the 22cm fluted loose base flan tin by rubbing butter all over the internal surfaces.After 30 minutes, roll out the pastry to about 3mm thickness (big enough to cover the whole flan tin). Gently press the pastry in place within the flan tin and chill it in the fridge for another 20mins.

Crumple a large piece of parchment paper (enough to cover the flan tin) and then carefully open it up and line it over the chilled pastry. Sprinkle ceramic baking beans over the parchment paper and blind bake the pastry for 15mins. Then set it aside to cool down completely before the next stage.

Stage 2: The fillingIngredients:

50g Self raising flour

100g Ground almond

100g frozen blueberries

1 zest of orange

1 tsp of orange essence

80g Unsalted butter

2 tbsp Thick double cream

125g Castor sugar

1 Large egg and 1 egg yolk

Preheat the oven to 180'C.Use an electric hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the orange zest and essence and mix well. Add the egg and mix it until fully incorporated then mix in the egg yolk and beat until well mixed. Then add the thick double cream. Beat until everything is fully incorporated. Gently fold in the flour and ground almond until just combined. Spread the filling mixture over the cooled pastry case, the level it. Sprinkle the blueberries over the mixture.

Bake the tart in the oven for 30-35minutes or until the crust is golden colour. Insert a skewer to the middle of the tart, if it comes out clean, the tart is cooked. Remove it from the over to cool down. Allow the tart to cool down before removing it from the flan tin.

Let's Eat Weed!

The idea of foraging for food in the wild has always been a fascinating idea for me! Free food and all that..If I can stomach garden snails, I would have a lot of meat to eat through out the year! But those slimy creatures are nasty!

But I found out that there is another wild thing that I can eat from my garden..WEED..onion! An edible Spring bulb plants. The whole plant is edible from the bulb, the leaves to the pretty white flowers. The plant has a hint of oniony smell plus a pungent fragrance that I can't put into words, maybe a bit too overpowering for my liking when they are raw. (Maybe that is why they are regarded as weed not vegetable!) It doesn't smell anything like spring onion, or young leek (as some people might suggest).

But since they are free food from my garden, I am happy to give them a try! Once cooked, they smell a lot less pungent, and very much like other complementary ingredients for a dish.

I mixed the finely chopped weed onion to marinated minced pork to make some burgers. And also experiment using the whole plant as the substitute for spring onion for the pork liver stir fry. I think they work well with ginger and meat! But I don't think I will eat them in any raw salad!

Chocolate Molten Lava Cake

No longer a molten lava cake virgin! I am quite happy that I got it right for the first time round. So effortless to make these rich and tasty cakes. I wonder why they always make it seems so dramatic and difficult to make these on MasterChef!

The processes of making these cake are rather straight forward and simple! ﻿Ingredients: (makes 3)﻿

50g (70%) Dark chocolate

50g Unsalted butter

75g Soft brown sugar

2 Medium eggs

Few drop of Vanilla extract

25g Plain flour.

Pre-heat the oven to 200'C. Grease the ramekins and dust it with cocoa powder.

Melt chocolate and butter together over a double boiler, and set aside to cool down for 15 minutes.Then add soft brown sugar to the chocolate mixture and stir until well combined. Hand whisk one egg at a time to the mixture until well integrated. Add the vanilla extract then gently stir in the flour until combined.

Pour the mixture to the greased ramekins and bake in the oven for 10-11 minutes.

Quickly, but gently tip the cakes to the serving plates and duct them with icing sugar or cocoa powder to decorate the plate. All done!

Serve these cakes immediately while still hot. The cake will continue to cook until you dive in! If you leave it for few more minutes, the molten lava inside might gone solid by then!

Not Grimm! (gingerbread "house")

"Radical visuals of precisely engineered simple components & adventurous flavors: fresh wasabi and ginger. The design is anything but Grimm." The fresh wasabi and ginger give this version of gingerbread a rather distinctive taste. The tiny bit of the heat at the back of your throat seems to lighten the heavy "butter-ness" and sweetness of the gingerbread.

The competition rule was to use 140 characters to describe the project..which is not really enough to tell the judges the underlining "design" concept. (Other top 10 entries obviously breaking the rule of using more than 140 characters!! They should be disqualified! hahaha..)

Basically, the idea was to use the 5cm ratio as the guiding principle. A mixture of the 2.5cm, 5cm and 10cm volumes made up the inter-relationship number for each of the component. This gives "structure" to the design, but also allows the overall shape to be rather sculptural.

Rather difficult to precisely engineered each panels to be straight and right angle..And the dough harden rather quickly which make it even harder to produce the smooth panels for the components. It took me 7 hours just to make all the components and another 2 hours to put all those components to a shape that pleases my eyes!

Why we (Architizer) love it: The elegant simplicity really speaks to us after seeing so many gobs of frosting and kitschy candy canes. Also, this sounds like it would be the most delicious to eat afterwards.

Coconut Cupcake with Mango Buttercream

This is an improved version of my "award winning" mango and coconut cake for Brighton "Bite Off". The order of the ingredients were totally re-shuffled to give these cupcakes a more elegant and contemporary look. These cupcakes also my first "official" order for a party! Still a lot of room for further improvement!

Really love the refreshing colours, rather attractive with those bits of freeze dried raspberry and mango. The drizzle of mango puree add not only colours, but also adding further intense flavour of the mango and a hint of fragrance passion fruit.

To make the coconut cupcake base, you will need the following ingredients: (to make at least 12! if you didn't over-fill the cups!)

225g Self rising flour (sifted)

275g Caster sugar

110g desiccated coconut

125g melted butter

3 Eggs (lightly beaten in a cup)

125ml full fat milk

1/2 tsp coconut essence

Pre-heat the over to 180'C. Line the cupcake tin with your favourite cupcake lining. (I really like the overall colour coordination of these cupcakes! Pretty and refreshing!)

Combine flour, sugar and the coconut in a large mixing bowl, then stir in the cool melted butter, milk, eggs and the coconut essence until combined.

Fill the cupcake lining with the batter (just slightly 2/3 of the cupcake lining). Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes or until cooked. (usual testing method - insert a skewer to the middle of the cake, if it comes out clean, it is cooked!)

Once cooked, remove the cupcake from the tin and set aside to cool down completely before any attempt to decorate them.

For the mango buttercream, you will need the followings:

180g Butter (soften at room temperature)

3 Cups icing sugar (sifted)

4 tbsp Mango puree

1/2 Mango essence

Cream the soften butter in a large mixing bowl for 3 minutes, add the icing sugar and gently mix them to combine. Add mango puree and the essence. And beat the mixture further until light and fluffy. You may add some yellow food colouring to give the buttercream a more vibrant colour. Once done, put them in a piping bag and set aside in a cool place (or in the fridge, but make sure the buttercream is not too hard when decorating your cupcake)

To make the mango puree, just blend the mango flesh with some (a tablespoon or so) spring water in a blender until smooth. Then sift the mixture through to get rid of any lumps. Combine the puree with few drops of mango and passion fruit essences (to taste).

To assemble the cupcakes, pipe the buttercream on the cupcakes, any design as your like! Then drizzle the mango puree and sprinkle some freeze dried mango and raspberry pieces on top of the butter cream. Done!

There! Fragrance with elegance for a sophisticate party...I hope there will be more orders soon!! :-)If you are in Brighton or London areas and thinking to have a party with some beautiful and elegant cupcakes, please give me a shout, I might be able to help you there!

Brighton "Bite Off" 2013

Redeemed myself from last year's embarrassment! My timing for baking my bread was all wrong last year. The bread looked great externally, but it was under baked! I was gutted!

So I promised myself, I must plan my bake time well for this year's Brighton "Bite Off". The event happened 2 weeks ago at Hove Lawn, along the seafront. Many different types of food stalls there during the 2-days event. Some food looked appetising, but not as tasty!

I submitted a sourdough bread and a cake for the "competition". I won first for the bread category for my red Leicester cheese with coriander and chilli and second for the cake category for my mango and coconut buttercream cake. IT was such a great fun to win 2 rosettes and not embarrassed myself!

It seems like brownies always get the first prize..2012 and 2013! I know what I have to do next year!! HAHAHA....

I have a couple of failed attempts of making croissants. It was quite some messy trials. Hence, I have never want to try to make puff pastry, they are kind of similar in the making process. Further more, those shop-bought puff pastry are much cheaper and easy to handle. But not as exciting as home-made ones.

I always refer to Delia's "Complete Cookery Course", when I want to learn some cooking techniques the proper way. This book was a Christmas present from someone whom I used to be quite close with. It is such a shame that we are now on different paths in our lives, and no longer in contact. He will always have a place in my heart.

If you can get on hold of the book, the John Tovey's Rough Puff Pastry recipe is on the page 520. Quite easy to follow.

For half of the ingredients stated in the recipe (Instead of using half margarine and half lard, I replaced them with just butter). I made 3 different types of pastries (for fun!). Few mini puff pastry croissants, few peach tarts, and some egg custard tarts. They are all quite tasty. The pastry is flaky, crisp, and light.

***UPDATE! This recipe now featured at "Love Food Hate Waste" website. My first "award winning recipe"..hahaha..I got 2 tickets to attend the Cake and Bake (maybe it should be called "Cake Decoration") Show in London. It was a fun trip to the show, saw some familiar TV chefs and some contestants from previous year The Great British Bake Off...I think the cake show has too many cake decoration and cupcake stalls, not enough patisserie-type bakery stalls...********

The other day, I learned to make this delicious savoury cake. Originally a type of Malaysian Nyonya savoury snack, usually with turnip as one of the main ingredients. You can order this as one of the dimsum dishes in a Chinese Restaurant. This is quite a versatile "cake", you can eat it as it is once cooked or fry it in oil until the skin is crispy, or use the leftover to make a stir fry!

To make the cake, you will need the followings to make the batter:

350g rice flour

70g Tapioca flour

700ml water

1tbsp wheat flour (You can get this from a Chinese grocer, not the typical wheat flour you can get from supermarket)

1tsp salt

1tsp sugar

2tsp five spices powder

2tsp pepper

I piece of pork stock cube

Mixed all the ingredients together until a smooth batter and set aside.

Prepare the following ingredients to be mixed into the batter:

500g Shredded butternut squash

4 Slices (or about 150g) smoked bacon (cut into small pieces)

60g Dried shrimps (soaked and finely chopped)

150ml oil

First, heat the oil in a deep pot. Gently fry the the chopped dried shrimps and bacon pieces until fragrant and lightly brown. Add the butternut squash. Cook until the butternut squash soften (but not mashy). Remove the mixture from the pot and set aside to cool down.

Once the butternut squash and bacon mixture is cooled. Add it to the batter and mix well.

Return the batter mixture to the pot and slowly cook it until the batter is thicken. Stir the mixture continuously, it will be quite sticky!

Prepare the steamer over boiling water in a wok or a deep pot. Oil a deep glass steaming tray (that fit into your steamer) and put the thicken batter in. Smoothen and level the mixture. Steam the batter for about 30 minutes until it is stiffen. Remove it from the steamer and set aside to cool down.

Once the cake is cooled, cut it into serving pieces, and garnish it with the caramelised onion and bacon, sprinkle spring onion and chillies to add colours to the toppings. Ready to be served (warm or cold)!

If there is some leftover cake, you can cut it into smaller chunks, and make a quick stir fry with some cabbage, eggs etc...Equally delicious!

Steamed Chicken Marinated with Ginseng Powder

Effortless cooking...Chicken marinated with ginseng powder. The slight bitterness from the ginseng powder awakening your appetite, make your saliva flows in your mouth to taste the simple and pure sweetness (with a hint of saltiness) of steamed chicken.

Very simple to make but quite nutritious. According to Wikipedia..."Folk medicine attributes various benefits to oral use of American ginseng and Asian ginseng (P. ginseng) roots, including roles as an aphrodisiac,stimulant, type II diabetes treatment, or cure for sexual dysfunction in men"...Hahaha...Now you know what you have to eat to to make you a "STRONG" man!!

Ingredients:

2 chicken legs

Approximately 2 tbsp (I grind some ginseng root into powder for dish)

1 tbsp sea salt (you can use more salt for this dish so then you can use the sauce to flavour your rice)

5 tbsp sweet glutinous rice wine

Marinate the chicken pieces with ginseng powder, salt and the sweet glutinous rice wine. Set aside for at least 30mins or longer.

Once marinated, steamed the chicken over high heat boiling water until it is fully cooked.This dish is best serves with plain white rice. Flavour the rice with the juices from the chicken...YUM!

For the dipping sauce, mixed together the following ingredients:

1 tbsp minced ginger,

2 stalks of finely chopped spring onion

Few crushed fresh coriander seeds (or few coriander stalks) for more intense flavour than using the leaves.

Found a forgotten package of dried chrysanthemum flowers in my store cupboard. The cooling effect of the chrysanthemum tea is perfect for the summer. I wish I found it much earlier. The weather was rather hot (but nice) during the last couple of weeks.

The initial idea was to make some chrysanthemum tea jelly, but once the jelly was set, I thought it looked rather like "Ice Jelly" - "愛玉冰". a refreshing cool dessert with lime juice syrup that you can get in Asia. The slight bitterness of the chrysanthemum tea would make a perfect complement to the lime juice syrup. A very refreshing experiment of chrysanthemum tea jelly and lime juice syrup!To make this dessert, you will need:

A large generous handful of dried chrysanthemum flowers. (Washed)

About 1 litre of water (to produce approximately 400ml tea)

1 Sachets of gelatine (depending on how hard you would like the jelly to set)

Few large tablespoonful of sugar (to taste)

To make the tea, firstly wash the flowers and then boil them in a pan of water for at least 5 minutes until you get a beer yellow colour consistency. Drain the tea with a sift. Add the sugar. Measure about 400ml tea and add the gelatine. Stir well until the gelatine is fully dissolved in the liquid. Pour the liquid to a container and let it set for use later. Then cool it in the fridge for 1hr.For the lime juice syrup, squeeze the juice of one lime. Measure the lime juice. Add one portion of the juice with two portion of the same amount of water to the juice in a pan and add 2 large tablespoonful of sugar. Boil the syrup mixture for at least 5 minutes. And then set it aside to cool down.When the jelly is set, cut or scope it out into a bowl and add few tablespoons of the lime juice syrup to the jelly. Done!Excellent to serve this dessert cold during a hot summer day...

This a ch"easy"t way of making ice cream without ice cream maker. I actually can't see why do we need an ice cream maker. (*) The process of making ice cream is quite simple. Firstly, you have to prepare the custard whether you have an ice cream maker or not. Without an ice cream maker, you pour it to a freeze proof container and put the custard uncover in the freeze for an hour or so until the edge of the custard starting to harden. Take it out and put the semi-frozen custard in a large bowl, and whisk it thoroughly. Pour the mixture back to the container (**), cover, and freeze it until the ice cream is ready to be served.

For this easy to make raspberry ice cream, you need:

300ml double cream

150ml single cream

Concentrated raspberry juice (Cook the frozen raspberry (±200g) with a squeeze of 1/2 lemon juice and 1/4 cup water. Cook until the raspberry totally broken up. Strain the juice with a strainer, and discard the seeds. Pour the juice back to the pan and cook until the juice thicken.) Set aside to cool.

1/2 cup of syrup (dissolve some sugar with some water and bring it to a boil), to taste. Set aside to cool.

First whisk the double, single and syrup in a large bowl until they form soft peak and hold it own shapes. Add 1/2 of the raspberry sauce to the mixture and mix well. Pour the mixture to a freezer proof container and put it to the freezer uncover. Follow as described above (*)....(**) After the second whisk, pour the remaining raspberry sauce to the cream mixture and use a knife gently swirl it into the cream mixture.

Since starting to write this food blog, I have cooked many different types of food. I always know I have a passion in cooking, but I am quite pleased with myself when I put all these food pictures together. Such a variety of colours. I must have fed myself well these few years!

I am lucky to have the chance to learn from many people/ books about cooking.

Really like these two photos...many shades of green..colourful! and the messiness and neatness (both have different kind of energy) in it.

A friend bought me the green tea powder from his recent trip to Tokyo. To repay his kindness, I made this ice cream for him. I think it is one of my best home made ice cream! Strong green tea freshness, just the right amount of sweetness!

The first attempt to learn to make these Chinese mooncake inspired pastry. The pastry skin is quite difficult to make. For this trial, instead of using home-made syrup (which I have already prepared few weeks ago. According to the recipe, the freshly made syrup must not be used until it is at least 2 weeks or more old), I read from some online resources, it is OK to substitute the home-made syrup with shop-bought golden syrup. And I also use ready-made sweet adzuki bean paste as the filling for my trial. When I have mastered the whole making process, I will do it properly again with all components home-made!

The recipe book I used for this experiment was a bilingual "Moonlit Mid-Autumn Festival" by Choong Su Yin. I bought the mooncake recipe book many years ago when I was in Malaysia visiting my family. I have read it MANY times, but not gutsy enough to try to make them in the kitchen! I am still trying to understand the original recipe from the book, which didn't tell me how long to bake these piggies in the oven. The temperature of 180'C stated in the book seems way too hot for this sweet pastry dough. Maybe I should not have substituted the home-made syrup with the golden syrup? Maybe the temperature of my oven is too hot? Maybe the ready-made filling is not cooked as per instructed as the recipe?

But I am quite happy with this first attempt. The flavour is not too bad, sweet scented pastry skin. (slightly too golden syrupy!) A few more attempts to learn the process I think. I am excited!

Note: 26.01.2013 - The pastry skin soften after 2 days which make it really close to those shop-bought mooncake's texture. Really quite tasty now!

Spicy Snake Bean With Pork. 乱棍打死猪八戒

This dish has an interesting Chinese name...乱棍打死猪八戒 (many random sticks killed the pig! Literal translation! haha). The pig here refers to one of the characters from the Chinese novel, Journey to the West.

This is also one of the dishes that reminded me of home, Malaysia. A typical Malaysian home-cooked dish using spicy dried shrimps paste (sambal). Spicy and a bit salty, perfect with a bowl of steamy rice.

Ingredients you will need: (enough to serve 2 persons)

A bunch of snake beans (Cut into few centimetre long) (You will be able to find these beans fresh in most of the Chinese green grocery shops)

About 150g sliced pork belly (You could you more or use less meat, really depending on your own preferences)

About a handful of dried shrimps (soaked in water for 5 mins)

Few cloves of garlic

2 Shallots (roughly sliced)

Chilli (Fresh or dried) (Depending of your preferences, you can have it very spicy or mild)

2 tbsp Cooking oil

A dash of soy sauce

Some water

First clean the snake bean and discard the top and bottom ends. Cut them into few centimetres long. Set aside.

To make the shrimp paste. Put the garlic, shrimps, shallots, chilli and a tablespoonful of oil in a blender. Blender everything finely and set aside.

In a wok or deep pan, put the shrimps paste and pork with some oil (the pork will produce some oil later once fried in the hot pan), so keep the cooking oil just about 1-2 tablespoonful. Gently cook the paste and the pork in medium heat until fragrant. About 5 mins.

Add the beans and stir fry it for few minutes add some soy sauce and stir-fry everything until slightly dry. Add the water, enough to cover the ingredients and let it cook for few minutes until the beans are just tender and the sauce is slightly thicken.

Serves it hot with steamed rice. Equally nice with brown rice or couscous...mmmmm.....

Orange and Fennel Salad with Almond Flakes and Goat's Cheese

This is a special recipe request from my dear friend, Cecelia from the "Middle Earth" A.K.A Auckland. She "whatsapp" me asking (in the middle of the night (UK time)) me to think of a very simple vegetarian salad recipe for her to prepare for a dinner party she is going..She suggested something with eggs and avocado etc...but I think it would look dull and uninspiring with those ingredients. Furthermore, the avocado will discolour rapidly and by the time she gets to her dinner party the salad would look quite sad!

I am the kind of person, if you presented me with a problem, I have no choice, but to find you a solution! After the conversation with Cecelia, instead of going back to sleep, I kept thinking about what can I teach her to make for her dinner party. Something that is so simple to make, but would make a beautiful impression to her friends at the dinner...

I have a vision of something elegant and refreshing...(I was actually thinking of a dish that represents the personality and character of Cecelia!) She is an elegant lady, and very colourful character..I want to teach her to make something that requires very little cooking skills, something with limited colour palette...and predominately white...

I think an orange and fennel salad would be a beautiful starter for her dinner party!

To make the salad, you will need the followings:

2-3 Medium or large orange (or grapefruit if you prefer some strong flavours) - cut away the skin and separate the flesh. Set aside in a bowl. Squeeze the orange juice from the remain of the oranges in another bowl.

1 large fennel bulb - thinly sliced (keep it fresh by putting the sliced fennel in a bowl of cold water and half of the lemon juice.) (Drained the fennel from the water completely just before you assemble the salad)

A generous handful of red radishes - washed and sliced to rounds

A small bunch of flat leave parsley - thinly sliced (if the fennel bulb comes with it feathery leaves, keep it as the garnish)

Goat's cheese - break into small chunks

A Generous handful of almond flakes

1 tbsp Honey (or sugar)

1 Lemon (use half of the juice for the fennel soaking water, and the other half for the salad dressing)

Salt (to taste) for the salad dressing

2-3 tbsp Olive oil

First, prepare the salad dressing. In a bowl, mix the orange juice, olive oil, salt and honey. Whisk thoroughly. Add a pinch of the sliced parsley leaves. Adjust the seasoning to your taste. Set it aside.

In a large white serving plate, layout the orange and fennel salad artistically...with all the different colours distributed evenly. Sprinkle generously the almond flakes and goat's cheese. Garnish with the fennel leaves (or parsley leaves).

DONE! So simple! IT is a perfect colour combination for these dull and grey Autumn days. The refreshing taste and colours on the plate will really brightening up your day, I am quite sure about it!

Pineapple Jam Pastry

These Pineapple jam pastries slowing becoming my signature bake! I love how the clove acts like the stalk for the fruity looking pastry. So delicate and elegant.

You will normally find this kind of pastry during Chinese New Year. Many home bakers have their own little secret recipes and different interpretations of the shape of how these pastries should look like. I have made them with apple jam before, so I shaped them round-ish to resemble the apple (Picture below - I think my baking skills have improved a lot! I made those apple jam pastries in 2009!).

For these pineapple jam pastries, I shaped them into a large almond shape but slightly rounded top and bottom part of the pastry before inserting the whole clove to the top end.

They are prefect for afternoon tea, or as little gift for a special occasions.

It is not particular easy to make these pastries. I have made the pastry dough a bit softer by adding more boiling water. This will give a very buttery and delicately lighter pastry skin.

You should prepare the pineapple jam few days ahead before making the pastry. This will allow the jam cool down and slightly thicken to the right consistency to shape them into small balls.

To make the pineapple jam. You will need:

1 Large Pineapple. (Skinned and discard the core. Coarsely grated. Then squeeze all the juices out (don't waste it!) and set aside.) (Pineapple juice is particularly good for preventing bloating and acidity.)

The amount of the sugar should be the same weight as the grated and drained pineapple.

A few cloves

1 Cinnamon bark.

Put all the ingredients in a pot and slowly cook it over high heat for approximately 15 minutes. Reduce the heat and cook further until the pineapple jam is thicken and glossy. Let it cool down completely and shape them into small balls for later.

To make these pastry, you need the following ingredients:

170g Plain flour

1 tbsp Sugar

140g butter (cold and finely diced)

1 Egg yolk (lightly beaten)

Small pinch of salt

2 tbsp hot boiling water

Extra few handful of flour (for kneading)

Grease a baking sheet with butter and pre-heat the oven to 150'C.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt and sugar together and then rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add in the beaten egg yolk and the hot boiling water. Mix it to form a dough. Add a few handful of additional flour if the dough mixture is too wet. The dough should be quite soft but not sticky. Shape the dough into a ball and wrap it in a piece of cling film and chill it in the fridge for at least 1/2 hours.

Once the pastry is ready, roll it out into a tube. Divide the dough into equal portions. You should be able to make at least 20 pastries (depending of the size you want to make).

Roll all the divided dough portions separately into small balls. Slightly flatten each ball with your palm and then roll it out with the rolling pin. Carefully wrap the pineapple jam ball with the dough. Shape it nicely and stick one clove to the top of the dough. Place it to the greased baking sheet.

Repeat the whole process until you have make use of all the dough. Chill the pastry in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Brush each pastry carefully with the glaze and then chill them in the fridge for further 10 minutes.

Bake them in the oven for 15 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 125'C and bake them for further 15 minutes. Remove the pastries from the oven and let them cool down completely on the wire rack. They should be ready!

But, for the finishing touch, if you think the pastry is a bit too pale. Once the pastries are cool, brush another layer of the glaze and bake them in 150'C oven for few more minutes until they are golden in colour.

ALL Done! Quite a long process, but it is worth it!

If you would like to learn how to make these lovely pastries, let me know! I can provide 1:1 tuition or small group cooking classes arrangement at your connivence. Please get in touch here...

This is so easy to make and (I think) quite health too as breakfast or snacks in the afternoon. All you have to do is slice the yellow plantain, diagonally, approximately 5mm thick. Lightly oil a baking sheet and arrange the plantain slices on top and dry it in the pre-heated oven, at around 150'C, until the slices are dehydrated. You may want to stop the drying process just before the the slices are completely dry. This will give you a slightly "meaty" end product.

To make the cinnamon yoghurt sauce, mix a generous couple tablespoonful of TOTAL 0% Greek yoghurt, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder (or more depending on your taste) and 1 tablespoonful honey together. Done!

Author

My name is Loong, I am an architectural designer with a very strong passion and instinct to cook colourful and delicious food....

I started cooking when I was about 10 years old. Even now, I vividly remember my grandmother showing me how to dry-fry black beans over the charcoal stove. As I stood beside her watching the beans hitting the wok, their sound changed from a dull rustling to a lively high "tinging" pitch. A light dry smell, like burnt coffee, filled the kitchen.

My aim is to cook appetising, yet humble food that satisfies not only your taste buds and your stomachs, but also feast your eyes and imagination. I hope to use this blog to show how simple, affordable ingredients can be easily transformed into delicious and beautiful dishes for your daily meals.